Pronunciation in an EFL setting: What's going on inside and around European classrooms?

Abstract

Over the past 30 years, numerous studies have looked at how English pronunciation is taught around the world, examining teaching practices, materials, training and attitudes to native speaker models from both the teachers’ and the learners’ perspective. Although these studies have examined important aspects of pronunciation teaching, the majority were restricted to English-speaking countries. Consequently, a group of us working in Europe felt it would be useful to compare how pronunciation is taught in Europe. Starting in 2009 we collectively designed an online survey called the English Pronunciation Teaching in Europe Survey (EPTiES), which we used over a period of two years to compile data about teaching practices (Henderson et al., 2012). This paper provides a brief overview of our results for seven countries about three interrelated aspects: the training teachers received to teach English pronunciation, what they say happens inside and outside the classroom. Further results and more detailed analyses can be found in the authors' various publications.